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Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Japanese Game Industry

An article caught my eye on Joystiq the other day. Basically one of the creative leads from Final Fantasy XIII said that FFXIII will resurrect the Japanese gaming industry.

Can you believe that someone actually has the audacity to say that their game that will single-handedly save their entire industry? The Japanese gaming industry needs some serious work.

I just looked at my gaming shelf and realized that there are almost no Japanese developed games there. The only two I see are Devil May Cry 4 and Resident Evil 5. Neither of which are original IPs at this point, being in their fourth and fifth incarnations. Honestly, RE5 wasn't even worth the cost of the game. I ended up with it because my brother and I were looking for a way to fill an empty weekend.

Western developers seem to be the norm these days. Of course, this is coming from someone who lives in the United States. Maybe things look differently if you live in Japan. Maybe they are still making games that appeal to the Japanese crowd. But, from an American standpoint I haven't seen anything revolutionary come out of Japan in quite a long time.

When did Japanese developers fall into second place? In the same interview they list the Call of Duty series as one of their major influences. To me that says that the Japanese are drawing from western influences. But according to the games on my shelf, they aren't holding up to the popularity of western games.

Despite all of this I still have high hopes for FFXIII. Final Fantasy has a great pedigree without many missteps. I just wish that Square-Enix could come out with a new game that is as good as Final Fantasy. Everything they release feels iterative at this point.

I hope that the Japanese gaming industry turns around and if FFXIII helps, then that's great. But for now I will continue to show my support of games with my wallet. Most of that money isn't going very far from home.

A Green Mushroom

This is a place for me to write down my thoughts on the world of gaming or any other subject that may catch my attention. Playing and discussing video games has been a big part of my life since I was a little kid. Although I hope to get comments and generate discussion, A Green Mushroom is mainly a spot for me to write about what I love, games.

I hope you enjoy reading A Green Mushroom. Feel free to leave comments.